To Live In It
by Erimthar
Summary: Buffy is dead. Now what's she going to do? Takes place between seasons 5 and 6. Contains character death and some disturbing imagery.


_There was no pain, no fear, no doubt,_

_'Til they pulled me out of Heaven._

* * * * *

"You died well, Buffy. Much better than I did."

That was the first thing she heard, when she came to herself. The voice coming from dead Kendra's beaming, beautiful face, telling her she had died well.

Buffy closed her eyes... or whatever stood in for her eyes, here. When she did, all she could see was the ground, coming at her with terrifying speed, over and over again, as if on a loop.

"Dawn....?" she whispered.

"Alive and safe."

"Glory...?"

"Not so much."

Buffy opened her eyes, because that was so much better than having them closed. She looked around her, which didn't seem to do much good.

"Where's here?" she asked.

"Good news, Buffy," Kendra said. "You've made it to Heaven."

"Heaven? You mean with the clouds and the harps and the... sitting around doing nothing until the end of time?"

"Not for us," Kendra replied, smiling even more broadly. "That's the even better news. We're still Slayers. The Powers That Be have work for us to do."

* * * * *

Buffy's reunion with her mother was a joyful experience. There were no tears, she was somewhat surprised to discover. It was true that there was no crying in Heaven. "I hoped it would be a long time before you came here, Buffy," she said. "But I guess I knew it wouldn't be."

They talked about Dawn, and Willow and Tara, and Spike. But they hadn't really been apart that long, and soon there wasn't that much left to talk about.

_Shouldn't meeting Mom again have felt different? _Buffy thought to herself. I_ thought it would feel different._

Buffy had wanted Kendra as a partner, of course, but it turned out she was already assigned to another girl, from the French Revolution or something. At first they'd tried to pair Buffy up with a German Slayer, whose name she couldn't pronounce but which had something to do with flowers. There had been compatibility issues. And so, Buffy had wound up with Nikki Wood.

Nikki was the coolest and least angst-ridden dead Slayer Buffy had encountered yet. She was easygoing, funny, had amazing fashion sense, and a lot of interests in common with Buffy. Heaven, as it turned out, was not a place that catered much to those interests. So Buffy and Nikki were both eager to get on the job and see interesting things.

"We patrol the future," Nikki told her, making it all seem much simpler than any of the previous attempted explanations given by others. "We look for bad things that are about to happen, but haven't happened yet. Then we report them back to Director Weston, who passes the info on to the Powers, who then send it on to the Champions in the form of visions. And hopefully, something gets done about it and the bad thing never happens."

"What kind of success rate do they have with that?" Buffy asked.

"I try not to think about it," Nikki replied with a shake of her head. "Not our problem anymore. We did our part in the fight. Now it's somebody else's game."

"That's a relief," Buffy said with a happy sigh. "I could get used to this Heaven thing. I think I'm ready for my first assignment now, partner."

* * * * *

He looked to be about 15 years old -- one of those goth kids who try way too hard to be outcasts. Buffy remembered them well from high school... spending lunch hour sitting at the Uncool Kids' Picnic Table on the far side of the basketball courts, looking tortured and disaffected and loving every minute of it.

She'd also seen quite a lot of those kids during her patrols. Where vampires were concerned, their t-shirts might as well have read "All You Can Eat" instead of "Sisters of Mercy."

This particular one now found himself hanging from the bottom of a fire escape in a hopelessly deserted part of some industrial area. There were vamps on the stairs above him, and several more waiting below, just out of easy reach of his dangling legs. None of them seemed to be in any big hurry. Sunrise was still hours away.

Every so often the vamps all went quiet, as if to better enjoy the kid's terrified whimpering. A particularly good whimper would draw a good deal of laughter from the assembled undead, though not as much as when the kid actually wet his pants. That one was a real hoot.

"Hey, boys," Buffy called out. "Softer meat over here. That one's gonna be all stringy."

It was a good quip, but the vamps ignored her. _Oh yeah. I'm not really here._

The kid finally lost his grip and fell, flat on his back. The vampires scattered out of the way, then gathered around, inspecting him. Moving in closer, Buffy could see that he wasn't moving, except for his head. His neck was broken, and he was paralyzed from there down.

He could still scream, though. The vampires appreciated that.

Half an hour later, Buffy got her first compliment on a job well done from Director Weston. As for the kid on the fire escape -- "It will be taken care of," she said. "One way or another."

* * * * *

"So," said Nikki, "a green ball of energy, right?"

She and Buffy were sitting on a bench at some mall in the Valley, watching the kids go by. Nikki had been hilariously making fun of the clothes worn by passing teenagers (which was pretty ballsy, considering Nikki herself came from the 1970's).

"That's what they say," Buffy replied. "A green ball of energy with a body attached."

"And you went ahead and died for it."

"Her," Buffy corrected. "She was _my_ li'l green ball of energy, and I loved her. Um, love her. She's my sister."

"You know, all human beings are is balls of energy with bodies attached to them. The soul is just a bunch of electro-magnetic stuff. So they tell me. I always skipped out of physics in school."

"So Dawn is actually one up on us," Buffy said. "She's still got a body. Pretty one, too."

"And she's green. Got that going for her."

Buffy almost smiled, thinking about Dawnie. She sighed. It was getting to be time to patrol again.

* * * * *

Buffy recognized the young witch who appeared to be in charge of things. The other coven members seemed to be deferring to her. Too bad for them.

The witch -- whose name Buffy couldn't put her finger on just now -- had been a friend of Willow and Tara's. She'd been over to the house a couple of times, not long ago. Buffy could remember the three of them lying around in Will and Tara's room, studying their magic books like kids with their homework.

Unfortunately she hadn't studied quite hard enough, it seemed.

Unfortunately the defensive circle the coven had drawn was the wrong kind for this particular type of demon.

Unfortunately, this was a type of demon that took an interest in young women beyond simply killing them.

Unfortunately.

"Don't worry," Director Weston assured her, "it hasn't happened yet. We are a little stretched at the moment in the Sunnydale area, but we should be able to get someone up from Los Angeles within the day. I would say their chances are very good. Another excellent job, Agent Summers."

* * * * *

"Don't worry so much about it, Buffy," Nikki told her. "You're retired now. This is just an eyes-and-ears kind of job, you know? Don't take it all so personally. I did too, when I first got here. Every vision I'd get made me want to reach for the old stake and get busy. But you get over it after a while. That's the thing about Heaven. You get to see the big picture, but you don't have to deal with it."

"Yay me," said Buffy.

* * * * *

Oh, this next vision was a good one. Faith was back; there was a Slayer on duty again. That was the good news. Or would have been, if Faith hadn't, unsurprisingly, been crazy and evil and opened up the Hellmouth to let the Oldest Evil in the World pour through with an unstoppable army of demonic vampires.

"Looks like things are about to get crowded around here in Afterlife Land," Buffy said with a sigh and a shrug. "This is the way the world ends. With a lot of bangs and whimpers."

Xander died bravely. Buffy tried to be proud of him.

"Is that what you're getting?" came Nikki's voice in the midst of the vision. "I'm seeing something different. There's two Slayers again, like with you and Kendra and you and Faith. Must be the new rule or something. I can't really see faces too clear..."

Giles died trying to protect Willow. Silly Giles. Willow should be the one protecting you. There was no sign of Tara. Oh, wait... there she was. _Was_ being the operative word.

"Wanna hear something funny, Buffy? One of the Slayers is sleeping with the same vamp that killed me. I think that may even be my jacket he's still wearing."

The sweet ball of green energy fizzled out. Dawn only cried a little, in the end.

"And the other Slayer? I think she's sleeping with my son. Sleeping with a Slayer. I'm gonna have to rise from the grave and slap some sense into that boy."

Nikki's words only registered vaguely with Buffy. Two Slayers. A hell of a job they seemed to be doing, then.

Willow seemed to be the only one of Buffy's friends still alive. Strange that Buffy could hear her voice quite clearly, over such a distance. She looked to be fighting for her life, but her voice didn't match her actions. It seemed pretty steady and calm, considering the circumstances. ..._Warrior of the people... Osiris, let her something something... Osiris yadda yadda..._

The world began to go away. Or was it coming back? Hard to tell. Was there a difference?

"It's all for the best, Buffy," came Nikki's voice from a great distance. "It's a hard world to live in."

"I know," whispered Buffy. "But I've missed trying."

Nikki was gone now, and even Buffy's memories of her seemed to be fading. Even Heaven wasn't forever, it seemed.

_Thank you, Willow,_ Buffy thought to herself. _Please let me remember to thank you._ She closed her eyes for the last time before she opened them again, for the first time.


End file.
